We, my dear Crossman, are Greeks in this American Empire. You will find the Americans

much as the Greeks found the Romans. Great, big, vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous

than we are, but also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues, but also more corrupt.

We must run Allied forces HQ as the Greeks ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius.

That was Harold McMillan talking to the future Labour MP Richard Crossman during the Second

World War, and Tom, we do think of ourselves, don't we, a little bit, as the Greeks to

the Americans, Romans, as the sort of... I mean, people think of us as the brains behind

the operation, don't they? Ultimately. I mean, I know we're down on our

Europas. I know we're not what we were, but I hope we're better than the freed slaves

who served the Emperor Claudius. Yes, quite a few of them must have been Unix.

They weren't Unix, but I mean, nothing to boast about. So we're continuing our World Cup

series, aren't we? And we're doing kind of special episodes on the countries that are playing

England in the group stages of the Qatar World Cup. So we've already done Iran, and today

England are playing the United States. And one of the things that was very salient in the episode

we did on Iran is that in international relations, power balances tend to mean that one country,

the less powerful country, is far more obsessed with the other country than the powerful countries

with the inferior country. Of course. So Iran is much, much more obsessed with Britain or England

than Britain is with Iran, say. Yeah, and we've had that a bit actually Tom, because we've had

that with Argentina when we talked about the Fulcans War. Many months ago, all those countries

that were affected by Britain's empire, either formally or informally, developed a kind of

mingled admiration and resentment of Britain and they, and I wonder whether that's similar to

the relationship that we now have with the United States? Well, what's interesting about Britain's

...